challenges : The Art of Non-Conformity

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Work

If It Matters, You’ll Find a Way

This post was written entirely in the air between Seattle and Anchorage the other day.

It was a bad travel hacking morning. For some reason I was assigned a middle seat in peasant class—the torture chamber of the modern traveler. Alas.

I squeezed into 6B and unloaded my stuff. MacBook, notebook, magazine, iPad, book manuscript, cinnamon twist. I tried to arrange things as best as possible, without sitting on the MacBook or the crucial cinnamon twist.

I felt sorry for myself for a moment. And then I realized the obvious: am I going to complain, or am I going to get to work?

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Life

Second Chances

The first time I was busted as a juvenile delinquent, I wasn't actually arrested—apparently I was too young. I was eleven years old in a small town in rural Montana, and the way it was explained to me at the time, the laws in my state did not allow for juveniles to be charged with a crime before the age of thirteen.

My non-crime was burning down an abandoned house. I'd love to say it's a long story, but it's actually pretty short. I used to hang out in this abandoned house for fun, it had a lot of old mattresses lying around, and one day I decided to see what would happen if I lit one of the mattresses on fire. Surprise! When you light a mattress on fire and walk away, the whole house burns down. Homeschoolers, take note of this potential object lesson.

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Life

How To Put Off Making Decisions About Your Life

Everyone hates making decisions, especially ones that are important and determine the course of their future.

Thankfully, there's often no need to make such decisions.

Instead, you can simply put them off, often indefinitely. By shifting your life to autopilot, you'll be in good company, since many people prefer to let things come their way instead of making things happen.

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Travel

Strange Places

I went to Ethiopia and was driven around on an afternoon city tour. “The streets are so bad here,” my guide said. “And the traffic in Addis is terrible!”

I looked out the window. Sure, it wasn't Scandinavia, but I'd seen far worse. “You should visit Liberia,” I said. “This looks pretty good to me.”

Over two weeks of travel, I flew a series of random airlines: Royal Air Maroc, Ethiopian, and Aeroflot. It was my first time on Aeroflot, and I'd heard plenty of horror stories. “You're flying Aeroflop?” someone asked. “The safety card in the seat pocket has a warning about not bringing goats on board.”